


The Third Generation

by wheel_pen



Series: Lucy [17]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Kid Fic, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy is in labor and Lex is nowhere to be found. Instead she has to turn to Lionel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Generation

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Lucy, my original character, is Clark’s cousin on the Kent side. Although human she may have some strange psychic powers and definitely has some issues in her past. She’s having a tough time with her mom and goes to live with Jonathan and Martha for a while. She and Lex form a relationship.
> 
> 2\. In my world, Lex eventually becomes President. And his staff is from The West Wing. 
> 
> 3\. I started writing this series during the third season of Smallville, so it diverges from canon then or earlier.
> 
> 4\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

It was 1:30 in the morning when the phone rang, and Lionel was asleep. “What?” he growled into the receiver, consciousness snapping firmly into place.

He recognized the sounds in the background instantly and tensed, his stomach turning to ice. In the last dozen years he’d gotten perhaps six phone calls that started this way, and they never failed to make his heart stop. The businesslike, feminine voice began her message: “Mr. Luthor? Your daughter-in-law is at Metropolis General Hospital—“

Lionel hung up the phone almost instinctively and was halfway up before he realized she’d said “daughter-in-law,” not “son.” He paused, but only for a moment, then finished dressing hurriedly and dug out a set of car keys. Things must have gotten bad for Lucy to call _him_.

 

A nurse met him immediately at the central desk and led him away from the sickly denizens of the waiting room, with their screaming children, sobbing, despairing stares. No one came to the hospital at 1:30 in the morning because they were _happy_. He followed her down two hallways, the space growing increasingly quiet and more private until they reached a doorway flanked by two nervous-looking young nurses. Lionel recognized the presence of LuthorCorp security people stationed at strategic positions up and down the hall. The nurse leading Lionel knocked quickly on the door and pushed it open. “Mrs. Luthor?” she began tentatively.

Lucy was pacing the comfortable room, dressed in a hospital gown and robe. For an instant, from the side, with her red hair falling over her pale face and her heavy belly protruding from the robe, Lionel had a very strong flashback to hospital visits more than twenty-six years ago. Lex refused to acknowledge how reminiscent Lucy was of his mother… Perhaps not so much in physical features, exactly, but there was a certain manner about her—an aura, if Lionel wanted to get metaphysical—

She spun around, green eyes flaming, and snapped, “Where the f—k is Lex?!”

Aura dispersed, Lionel decided. His wife had never spoken like that. Fully aware of the nurse’s presence behind him, the older man spoke like a caring father-in-law. “Lucy, are you alright?”

“Get out!” The nurse scuttled away and shut the door. Lionel’s eyes narrowed when he saw the flushed patches on Lucy’s face. Much of the time she was, of course, a massive inconvenience and a daily reminder of his son’s blatant defiance, but Lionel supposed he occasionally didn’t mind her existence. More to the point, he had a feeling that if anything _happened_ to Lucy, Lex would become… unpredictable. Dangerously so. Destructively so.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked in a colder tone, closer to his usual one, as he approached her across the tiled floor.

“I’m f-----g having a baby, that’s what’s wrong with me,” Lucy pointed out furiously. She continued to track between the unmade bed and a lounge chair, as if unaware she was moving at all. “And I can’t find my g-----n husband!”

Lionel was already reaching for his cell phone. “What do you mean, you can’t find him?” he repeated coolly, scanning his address book for a certain name.

“I tried his cell phone, his secretary, his office, I woke up half the f-----g employees of LuthorCorp, and _no one_ can get him!”

Lionel dialed the number. After two rings, the call was answered. “It’s me. Find Lex. Get him to Metropolis General. _Now_.” He hung up.

Lucy was staring at him. “Who was that?” she demanded.

“Someone who finds people,” her father-in-law told her with an icing of arrogance.

“I want his number.”

“Sorry, he only answers to me.”

For a moment they were silent, Lionel watching her closely as she stared distractedly around the room. He saw the pain sneaking up to her face during the milliseconds that it was only discomfort, but her loud gasp as she bent and clutched at her belly alarmed him nonetheless. He moved forward quickly, grabbing her hand and her opposite shoulder to keep her upright. “Get back in bed,” he ordered her, steering her in that direction.

Reluctantly she reclined back on the mattress, her jaw relaxing as the contraction stopped, and he punched the call button. “You’re six weeks early,” he pointed out, slipping the dark trenchcoat off. He had a feeling he would be here for a while.

“No s—t,” Lucy responded as one of the nurses stationed outside timidly entered the room.

“Mrs. Luthor, if I could just see how dilated you were—“

Lucy started to shift on the bed. “Turn around,” she ordered Lionel.

He rolled his eyes. “Honestly, you act as if I’d never seen a—“

“Turn around or I will rip your f-----g arm off.”

Lionel turned around. He heard fabric shifting behind him, then the nurse told them, “Another centimeter, Mrs. Luthor. I’ll go tell the doctor.” She seemed more than eager to vacate the room.

“May I turn around now?” he asked sarcastically.

“Fine.”

He turned and draped his coat over the back of a chair. “Lucy, you seem a little out of sorts,” he observed dryly.

She gave him a look that was pure death, enough to turn a lesser man into a quivering pile of gelatin, and he was quite impressed. Usually he only saw her with her pigtails and milkshakes and cutely barbed comebacks. “You’re the one who sent Lex to that g-----n meeting at seven,” she reminded him. “If he were here you could have kept sleeping.”

Before her father-in-law could reply the door opened and a clean-cut young man entered the room, trying very hard to exude a professional air in the face of a decidedly irate—but extremely wealthy—patient. “Mr. Luthor,” he greeted formally, barely concealing his surprise at the new visitor. Lionel smiled paternally. “Lucy.” The doctor glanced at his chart with great importance, and Lucy rolled her eyes. Lionel almost restrained a smirk. “Well, Lucy,” the doctor continued, “I think both you and your baby are going to be just fine—“

“I _know_ that, you idiot,” Lucy snapped. From anyone else, it would have been exaggeration.

The doctor glanced at her dubiously. “But I think the most expedient procedure would be a C-section,” he said firmly. “It will be fast, virtually painless—“

“No f-----g way,” his patient snarled.

“Now, Lucy--” the doctor admonished.

“There is no way in h—l you are slicing me open to get this over with faster for _you_ , you b-----d!” Lucy shouted, propping herself up on her elbows as best she could. “Where’s my _real_ doctor?!”

The doctor sighed with exasperation. “I told you already, Lucy, Dr. Rogerson isn’t on call tonight. Now why don’t we get an IV hooked up and we’ll give you something for the pain?”

“I’m not taking any drugs from you, you son of a b---h,” Lucy assured him. “I want to know _exactly_ what you’re doing to me!”

In the background Lionel had pulled out his cell phone again. “Rogerson, obstetrician at Metropolis General,” Lucy vaguely heard him saying. “Get her here.”

“Mr. Luthor,” the doctor said pleadingly, turning to Lionel, “I really think that Lucy ought to—“

Lionel fixed him with a cold stare and a colder smile. “Doctor--?”

“White,” he answered warily.

“Dr. White,” Lionel replied, “if she doesn’t want a C-section, she’s not having one. If she doesn’t want any painkillers, you’re not giving her any. If she changes her mind, I’ll let you know.” The smile, such as it was, disappeared. “Perhaps you have other patients to check on?”

The doctor’s mouth tightened to a thin line. “Yes, of course,” he replied with some hostility. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Lucy,” he added to his patient, turning towards the door.

“And you can f-----g call me Mrs. Luthor!” Lucy spat at him. The doctor paused, back still turned, then hurried out the door.

As soon as the door was shut she dropped back onto the bed and closed her eyes. Lionel dragged the chair closer to the bed and relaxed into it as if he did this sort of thing every day. “Your aunt and uncle are on their way back from Colorado?” he asked conversationally.

Lucy was not surprised he knew their whereabouts. “Yeah, I kind of ruined their anniversary ski trip,” she sighed.

“And your cousin? Germany, isn’t it?”

“He’ll come back,” Lucy replied tiredly. It was almost 2:30 am. “Clark always comes back.”

“What about your mother?”

Lucy gave him a sideways glance. In some things—many things, actually—Lex and his father were very much alike: whatever situation they were in, they wanted as much information as possible. That Lionel was making the effort to _appear_ personally interested in her answers could be construed as complimentary. Possibly. Not that she really cared.

“I left a message on her voicemail. She’ll probably stop by, if she’s not having more fun wherever she is. Don’t bother to summon her,” Lucy added dryly, seeing her father-in-law reach for his phone again. “She’ll just give me stress.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want you to snap under pressure.”

“F—k off.”

Lionel did not generally think of his daughter-in-law as temperamental. True, he tried to think of her as little as possible, but still. “Why did you call me?” He wasn’t irritated, merely curious.

Lucy looked at him as if it were obvious. “Because I can’t find my husband, I’m having your grandchild, and I need a little _help_.”

Lionel gazed at her speculatively for a moment. With some people, it would have taken a great swallowing of pride to say that. But Lucy—well, it was incorrect to say she had _no_ pride; sniveling bootlickers like Dominic had no pride. Lex frequently had too much. Lucy was… pragmatic. She needed help, so she asked for it. If Lionel had chosen to merely roll over and go back to sleep after the hospital called, she undoubtedly would have gone with another plan.

Pragmatic yet desperately loyal to his son. He tried to think of her as little as possible because it always led to pointless wondering. “You know, Lucy, if you’d taken my offer, you wouldn’t be waiting for your husband—“

“Don’t start that again, you sick old f—k,” Lucy told him, and he had to smile. “I’m having enough trouble right now—“

As if on cue another contraction rippled through her and Lionel reached out to take the hand nearest him. Her grip was becoming rather painful. When the moment passed, he poured her some water with his other hand. “Here.” She took the cup shakily and only slowly released his hand. “I sent Lex to a research lab on the other side of town,” he finally admitted. “He was told to do a thorough inspection, and some of the lower levels might have--limited cell phone reception.”

“Such a b-----d,” she muttered without much force, handing him the cup back.

“Well, I didn’t know this was going to happen, did I?” Healthy girl, healthy pregnancy, no family history of similar incidents, no earlier signs of trouble. Of course Lionel had a copy of her medical records.

“If you _had_ I bet you would have done it anyway.” She seemed calmer than when he had first arrived, he decided. Still tense, of course, which was not unexpected under the circumstances, but she sounded a little more like the person he was acquainted with.

“Speaking of which,” Lionel began, “why didn’t _you_ know this was going to happen?”

“It’s not like tuning into a TV station, you know. It comes in flashes,” Lucy huffed. Sometimes Lionel wondered if she said that just to avoid having her abilities exploited by, oh, say, _him_. Her current situation seemed to disprove that theory. “I know we’re both going to be alright…”

“Oh?”

“I saw myself at one of his fencing matches. He was about… sixteen.”

“Fencing, really?” Sometimes the girl _did_ sound quite insane, but at least this particular vision was amusing. Fencing was, of course, one of Lionel’s favorite hobbies, one that he suspected Lex dabbled in only with the hope of besting his father someday. Which would never happen if he _only_ dabbled. “A boy, then?”

“Yes,” Lucy admitted. “I didn’t tell Lex, though. I didn’t want him to know beforehand.” Which would explain the mysterious _lack_ of gender-determining tests in the medical records. Lucy must have been very persuasive to convince Lex he could live without _that_ piece of information for a few more months. “I didn’t want him to start projecting too soon.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.” Lionel was amused.

Lucy was serious. “He’s not going to be raised like Lex was,” she told him, holding his gaze steadily. “I won’t allow it. And don’t you f—k with me over my kids, Lionel. You’ll regret it.” Somehow he believed her. Perhaps _pragmatic_ was not the right word for her, however, since it was hardly pragmatic to start threatening him over children who didn’t exist yet.

“More than one, then?” Lionel asked indulgently. He accepted that Lucy somehow _knew_ things through unexplainable means; but he wasn’t prepared to believe _everything_ she said.

“Yes,” Lucy replied simply. “Not _this_ time, of course. Thank G-d. At least three in all, though.”

A quick knock on the door paused the conversation and a woman with long, curly blond hair messily tied behind her pushed her way in. “Dr. Rogerson!” Lucy exclaimed, pleased.

The woman smiled cheerfully, the only evidence of her enforced arrival at the hospital a sidelong glance at Lionel. “I understand you’re not having a great morning, Lucy,” she began pleasantly. “Let’s just take a peek here, okay?”

Fortunately Lionel’s position seemed to leave his view obstructed enough for Lucy. Or perhaps she had one or two other things on her mind at this point. “The doctor on call said something about a C-section,” she pointed out worriedly.

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Dr. Rogerson replied. “This little guy or gal’s about ready to pop out on their own.”

“It’s a boy, and I’m not having this baby until my husband gets here.” _Pragmatic_ was definitely out.

“Little fella seems pretty insistent,” the doctor told her easily. “And he _is_ a Luthor—that means prone to making sure he gets his way.” If that was a dig at Lionel, it was delivered in a tone more amused than irritated. He wondered idly what she had been doing when his people came for her. Lucy seemed to not notice the exchange at all.

Dr. Rogerson began signaling nurses, marking charts, moving equipment, and generally setting up other doctorly things that made Lionel vaguely alarmed. It was almost like they were _serious_ about this giving-birth event. It was probably time for him to go—at least out into the hall. Just when he was about to make his graceful exit, however, another contraction hit and Lucy grabbed his hand, refusing to let go. He remembered suddenly that she always seemed to _know_ things about people after touching them—like, say, shaking hands—which was one reason he had tried to avoid physical contact with her in the past. He reasoned that at the moment, however, her concentration was probably elsewhere. Also it was unlikely he would be _able_ to extract his hand from hers at this point.

“Just breathe regularly,” the doctor was telling her. “Try to relax.” Absurd advice, really, Lionel decided. Lucy was terrified. Suddenly he remembered that she was only twenty, and she looked it now—he hadn’t thought of it before.

Another contraction, and Lionel had forgotten how far apart they were, although they were certainly coming faster. He wondered what percentage of the pain she was feeling she had managed to transfer to him through her iron grip. If it was only, say, 10%, he had a new-found appreciation of the strength of mothers. He was about to ask for painkillers—for her, of course, although if they had anything for him it would be appreciated—when suddenly she seemed very relieved and actually leaned back against the pillows briefly. “Finally,” she muttered, although Lionel was pretty sure they weren’t done yet.

There were hurried footsteps in the hall and a moment later Lex came skidding into the room, black and sapphire blue contrasting sharply with the neutrals and pastels favored by the hospital staff. His outfit probably cost more than half a year’s salary for a candy striper, and that was without the shoes.

“Lucy, what the h—l?” he asked in confusion, immediately at her side holding her hand. If he thought it odd his father’s position mirrored his own, he chose to save that observation for study later.

“My water broke, and I couldn’t reach you—“ she began, still nervous but ten times more confident than before. She trusted Lex to make things better. Or perhaps things were just automatically better when Lex was there.

“J---s C----t,” he breathed. “You’re six weeks early.”

Instead of an expletive her husband got a plaintive eyebrow raise. Another contraction, the first Lex was present for, and he was duly impressed with her grip. Lionel suspected, however, that the pain reflected in his son’s face was not entirely due to his own physical discomfort.

“Doctor, can’t you give her something?” Lex asked with concern. He was still a little disoriented by the situation he had been flung into, but he knew he didn’t want to see that expression on his wife again.

“Well,” Dr. Rogerson answered in a tone that was far too sunny for almost three in the morning, “I guess there’s a little something we could give her, but by the time it kicks in this little fella will be halfway out.”

Another contraction. The noise Lucy made was inhuman to Lex’s ears and he felt like his heart was being ripped out. Didn’t anyone stop to think that this was a f‑‑‑‑‑g _stupid_ way to get new people in the world? Nothing else in the world this painful was considered a _positive_ thing, he decided. Except to people who were generally thought to be somewhat deviant, that is. And Lex swore to _G-d_ he was going to stop being one of those people, if Lucy never had to experience—

Another contraction, longer. This time there was a sharp hiss from the other side of the bed. “Lucy, let go of my hand.” His father’s voice was tightly controlled—few but Lex would have been able to hear anything amiss in it. Distracted, Lucy released him, and Lex’s eyes widened—his first two fingers were turning the unnatural shade of purple associated with bone fractures.

“Holy s—t,” Lex commented. Somehow concern for his father never quite bubbled up inside him, but at least the older man stepped gracefully out of the way. Nurses adjusting, fixing, checking immediately filled the void.

It was, perhaps, only another five minutes until the new Luthor entered the world, though to his parents it seemed like hours. Lex watched the red, wet, squirming, squalling mass emerge as though it were happening twenty feet away, to someone else, and the doctor’s announcement that it was a boy was heard through a fog he just couldn’t shake. Months of looking at toys and clothes, of talking about childhood memories and methods to be repeated (or mostly not), of feeling tickling kicks through flesh against his hand, of gazing at blurry sonograms—all of that seemed like daydreaming, no more real than five-year-olds playing with dolls. Ten minutes ago he was a father in theory. Now there was an actual living being who was part of him, made of him, that he could see and hear, and the reality of it hit him like crashing into a brick wall. His knees almost buckled under him.

He had gotten so used to the pressure of Lucy’s hand in his that he noticed the moment it started to ease, mostly by the pain lancing through his entire arm. He turned back to her, ready to make a joke about it while letting his eyes tell her what he really felt, but she had gone pale, too pale. Her beautiful green eyes rolled back and she fell back on the bed too quickly to be simple exhaustion. Machines started beeping. His heart stopped beating. “Lucy. Lucy? Lucy!”

No longer physically tethered to the bed, Lex was pushed handily out of the way as medical personnel scrambled to attach IVs, check vital signs, yell orders. His mother had gone quietly, expectedly, without this chaos and confusion, but he thought of her anyway, and he was frozen in place.

From the other side of the private room, conveniently out of the glare of the lights, Lionel watched. His curiosity was morbid, he admitted even to himself. Lucy herself had said she would be fine—for whatever that was worth—but Lex hadn’t heard those reassurances. What, exactly, was he going to do? Stand there helpless and still, like a child hoping no one noticed him? Grab a nurse, distracting her from her job by yelling impossible demands? Faced with what had to be one of his greatest fears… would he crumble?

For a moment Lionel thought he would. It was in his eyes. He wanted to. But Lionel watched as his son pulled himself up suddenly, set his jaw, and stepped away from the bed, giving the nurses more room. Lex’s eyes swept the room like they focused laser beams set on decimate, razing everything in their path until he reached the pair of nurses swaddling the new baby in the corner. His gaze fixed upon them. “Let me hold him.” It was a demand, firm, uncompromising, and his body language as he approached told them resistance would not be tolerated.

Interesting move, Lionel thought.

“Mr. Luthor, we need to get him to the ICU,” one of the nurses protested. Brave woman.

“Let me hold him.” He was already reaching out, taking the twisty bundle, and you just didn’t fight with someone when there was a baby in between you. It was a desperate move by a man who couldn’t control when his son entered the world and who couldn’t control whatever was happening to his wife—but he was going to _hold_ his son, for a moment, before they put him in a plastic box in ICU, g-------t.

Very interesting.

Lex turned away from them, holding the baby, staring down at his little red wrinkled face. His eyes were squeezed so tightly shut, like he was terrified to open them—less than five minutes old and already so tense, he was practically quivering. Lex predicted years of massage therapy. For a moment, just a moment, the rest of the room fell away and there was only the baby, the little human being who had been created with so much love, anticipated with so much hope, cultivated with the proper foods and music and multiple language exposure that parents with too much money and too much time to read childcare magazines obsessed over. He wondered if he had really been frightened by Haydn’s Symphony No. 49 as Lucy insisted. He wondered if his own father ever felt like this.

And then logic and reason and reality came back, and he handed the infant over to the nurses, who rushed him away to the neonatal intensive care unit like they thought he might demand him back at any second. His arms felt… empty somehow. More empty than they had been before he had first held the baby. Lex turned back towards the bed and things seemed to have calmed down a bit, the personnel had thinned out, the machines had stopped beeping so much. Dr. Rogerson was saying something to him, and he thought she was smiling, so that was probably good. He took his wife’s hand again; it was limp at first, and he felt sick, but then there was an answering squeeze that grew stronger the longer he held on, like she was pulling the strength right from him. Which was fine; he didn’t need it.

“Lucy?” Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled at him a little bit, reassuringly. Lex smiled back. “It’s a boy,” he told her quietly.

She nodded slightly. “I know.” Of course she did. She sighed and closed her eyes again, her breathing evening out. If anyone deserved a nap, it was her.

 

Lionel was reading the early edition of the _Metropolis Times_ , marveling that the birth of the heir to the LuthorCorp empire hadn’t made it in by press time, when Lucy made some sort of noise that caused him to glance her way. She was stirring a bit, her sleepy eyes drawn to the lamplight above him. He folded the paper up and set it aside.

“How do you feel?” It was what one asked.

“Kinda weird,” she confessed, her voice a little scratchy. “Am I on drugs?”

“Yes, I think they put something very special in your IV,” Lionel replied. Lex had been adamant beyond reason that Lucy be in as little pain as possible when she woke up, even if it meant she felt as high as a kite instead.

“Oh. Can I have a drink?” Lionel pushed himself out of the lounge chair and poured her some water from the pitcher beside the bed. “Hey!” she said suddenly as she took the cup. “What happened to your hand?” She definitely sounded like she was breathing in the upper atmosphere.

“It was being held by a woman giving birth without anesthetics,” he told her dryly, holding the two bandaged fingers up for her to see.

“Oh.” Realization slowly dawned. “Ohhhhhh. Sorry.” She took a messy sip of water—always a challenge when lying down, whether sober or not—then was quiet for so long Lionel thought she’d forgotten he was even in the room. “Where’s Lex?”

“He’s off harassing the doctors,” he assured her. There had been mutterings about getting licenses revoked and investigations by medical boards opened, but Lionel knew his son was just trying to work off some restless energy. Besides, Lucy would keep him from doing anything _really_ stupid. That was actually quite useful of her. “He’ll be back soon.”

She nodded and handed him back the cup. He waited a moment, to see if she wanted anything else, then went back to the chair and picked up the paper, watching her over the top of it. For a couple minutes she seemed determined to stay awake until Lex returned, but her eyes kept drooping. Finally she took a deep breath, willing herself to focus, and asked, “Will you write something down for me?”

Curious, Lionel took a pen from his pocket and refolded the newspaper. There was a particularly ill-informed editorial about the Malaysian stock market that could easily be lost to whatever ramblings his daughter-in-law wanted recorded.

“Damian,” she told him clearly. “That’s D-A-M-I-A-N. Damian Kent Luthor. That’s the baby’s name. Lex doesn’t know that’s what I picked.”

Lionel raised an eyebrow in surprise. “He let you pick the child’s name on your own? Very impressive.”

“Well,” Lucy admitted, “he had some suggestions. But we hadn’t made the final decision yet.” She gave a smile that was wan but unmistakably wicked. “I don’t think he’ll object, do you?”

Lionel copied down the name of his first grandchild. “I think you could probably get whatever you wanted from him today,” he agreed.

“If so much as a _letter_ gets changed you’re going to regret it,” she added tiredly. She was already closing her eyes.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” It was tempting, though, since she’d mentioned it.

There was a pause, and he thought she’d fallen asleep. “Lionel?”

He glanced back at the bed. “Yes?”

“Thanks. For coming.”

There were all manner of ways to interpret that, angles to examine, motivations to dissect. Given that it was Lucy saying it, however, and that she’d just given birth and was pretty well high, he decided it probably meant exactly what it sounded like. “No trouble at all,” he assured her, and he was surprised to find that he also meant it just the way it sounded—as much as he meant anything, anyway. “You should go back to sleep.” Before he started to _like_ her. He waited, to see if she would reply, but after a few moments he was relieved to find that she had taken his advice.

 

Lionel was on the sports section, brushing up on the Metropolis Sharks’ record for his meeting with the franchise administrators in a few days, when his son returned. He looked so wired Lionel briefly wondered if Lex had conned the pharmacy out of some choice stimulants. A glance at his overly-precise movements as he pulled another chair to the bedside, however, showed that Lex was probably operating on nothing more than caffeine and his own reserves, both of which were clearly depleting.

“Did she wake up at all?” he asked. He had barely even glanced at his father since entering the room, his entire focus on his wife.

“Briefly,” Lionel revealed, “to tell me what _she_ wanted for the boy’s name.” Now Lex looked at him sharply, taking the scrap of newspaper his father offered and studying it intensely. “You don’t trust me?” Lionel baited him, knowing how much Lex hated _him_ knowing the information first.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t _look_ like a name you would pick,” Lex finally decided. “Since it’s not Napoleon or Genghis Kahn or something.” He sighed, looking back at the bed. “We thought we had a few more weeks to come to an agreement about it.” He imagined his father was about to chide him for letting Lucy make the final decision, but he was too tired to care.

However, Lionel found himself strongly tempted to ask Lex what names _he_ had favored--but he realized that would make him appear to be interested, and that would make Lex suspicious. Instead he remembered something his son might find less complicated. “You were almost named Jason, did you know that?”

Lex gave him a look of surprise. “No.” _Alexander Joseph Luthor_ had always been presented as a destiny, a role that had always existed and was just waiting for him to be born into.

“Your mother was set on it.” Lionel did not look at Lex as he spoke. “But I persuaded her she could use it for the next one instead.”

For a moment Lex felt a flash of anger. Would _Jason Joseph Luthor_ have had a different life? Would he have escaped the meteorites, kept his mother, avoided the tabloids, made peace with his father? Would he have seen Smallville, met the Kents, found Lucy, had a son? For once Lex decided feeling angry was pointless. Instead he quipped, “The leader of the Argonauts wasn’t good enough?”

“Not compared to Alexander the Great,” Lionel replied simply.

There was a pause, then Lex pointed out quietly, “But you didn’t. Use it for the next one.” _Julian Adam Luthor_. 5/3/91-7/26/91. RIP.

“No…” His father’s voice had a tone he didn’t hear very often. “By then the name had become too popular. Your mother preferred something a little more offbeat.”

There seemed to be a… moment going on, and even though he would mock it later Lex didn’t want to ruin it. Still, he couldn’t help the huge yawn that demanded to be let out, and he slumped back in the chair, exhausted. He’d been up for almost twenty-four hours now, and he hadn’t exactly been taking it easy during that time. Besides which he’d had no artificial assistance aside from a few cups of really bad vending-machine coffee.

“And you were born at a much more reasonable time,” his father continued. The little tone in his voice was gone now, but at least he didn’t sound like his usual overbearing self yet. “Late afternoon.”

“How considerate of me,” Lex replied dryly.

“Hardly,” Lionel corrected. Lex almost smiled and caught himself just in time. “Your mother called me at ten, when I was in the middle of a very important meeting.”

“So what, you said, ‘I’ll send someone over,’ and went back to work?” The normal level of viciousness was absent in the comment.

“I dropped everything for your mother,” his father informed him. “But you loved to thwart me even before you were born, so you took another six hours before making your grand entrance.”

This time Lex did smile, although technically, he decided, he was not smiling _at_ his father, since he was watching Lucy sleep. There was silence for a few moments, silence of the sort that could almost be described as companionable, which frankly Lex found unsettling. Fortunately his father’s phone rang before they had a complete nervous breakdown and… _hugged_ or something.

“What?... Send them up… I’ll come down and handle it.” Lionel snapped the phone shut and stood. “I have to go now,” he said, picking up his coat.

Something flitted across Lex’s eyes—disappointment, perhaps? But maybe not the kind of disappointment Lionel was used to seeing in them, the kind that appears when a child’s birthday is missed for a business meeting. This was, possibly, something… different. But it only lasted for an instant, so he couldn’t be certain. “What’s going on?” Very casual, interested only in how it might affect him or Lucy.

“The Kents are here,” Lionel informed him. Probably a good idea that he not stick around, then. Lionel made an even better target for Jonathan Kent’s ire than Lex did. Really Lionel couldn’t understand why he fraternized with them so much. “The press has also arrived. I have to go play the doting grandfather.” He held up his two bandaged fingers. “This will go over _very_ well, I think. Adds to the warm, human aspect.”

“Broken bones indicating that you are, in fact, human?” Lex shot back, almost cheerfully. “There’s probably nothing even wrong with them.”

Lionel regarded his hand thoughtfully. “If I were going to fake this,” he decided, “I would have used the other hand. Writing is going to be rather difficult for the next few weeks.”

“Spend a couple bucks, get yourself a secretary or something,” Lex deadpanned. Lionel rolled his eyes and turned to go, but glanced back when his son added, “Thanks.” There _was_ something in those blue-grey eyes, the ones he’d gotten from his mother. Something slightly indescribable. “For helping Lucy out.”

Several responses came to mind, but Lionel decided to say none of them. Instead he just nodded once, then walked out of the room.


End file.
